Ghost Outside the Machine
by Elliptic Eye
Summary: A teacher shapes his protégé's thoughts, deeds, and history. It is hard to imagine activities more intimate than teaching—but there’s at least one. Remix of ionlylurkhere's "Establishing Events"


A/N: This is actually a remix of one story _into_ another: LJ's ionlylurkhere's "13.8 yoctojoules per Kelvin" into her marvelous "Establishing Events." "13.8" can be found at .?sid=17364, and "Establishing Events" at .?sid=12969. It was an honor to remix for her.

Establishing Events (the Ghost Outside the Machine Remix)

It possibly started near the center of the TARDIS.

The Doctor pulled himself up the ladder and into the next slanting corridor, humming to himself around the wires in his mouth. The TARDIS didn't have a geometric center, but she did have parts that were more central than others according to various definitions: parts that had existed prior in time to the others, parts where all other parts seemed to drain spatially, parts that originated certain signals, parts that were nested dimensionally, parts that reached deeper telepathically, and parts that were just more secret. This area was near her center according to several of those definitions.

The Doctor chewed thoughtfully on the wires as he looked about for the access point he wanted. Down here, it was both more organic and more geometric; apertures like blowholes lined the walls in an aperiodic distribution, but the corridor itself was hexagonal and antiseptic white. And a few meters away, with its back to the Doctor, stood a figure.

As the wires fell from the Doctor's mouth, the figure turned to face him.

"Doctor! It feels like a lifetime since I was you. More, even."

It was short and tidy, with a novelty jumper covered in question marks and a Panama hat which it doffed: more an illustration than a vision, more an idea than a man.

"You are not me. You aren't even you," said the Doctor.

"Oh, I am me, a bit. That bit was only a bit, true—but then, it was bigger on the inside."

The ghost's accent was simultaneously weaker and more caricatured than the original's had been, much like the colors of its eyes and question marks were too flat and the textures of its clothing too smooth. It had the quality memories took on with age, or of data that lost detail in compression. The Doctor shut his eyes and reminded himself that the TARDIS wasn't doing it on purpose, that she wasn't doing it to hurt him.

"But which of us is doing it?" said the vision. The Doctor opened his eyes, and the ghost leant on its brolly sympathetically. "Your fear is more substantial than I am, and I'm not doing that part. She's not doing that part."

"Please go."

"But you haven't asked the right question yet."

"Please won't you go before I get a divorce from my earlier personalities?"

"Still not the one you were looking for, sorry. Besides, that's isn't much of a threat without the Time Lords."

_"Why are you here?"_

"Ah. Yes, that's the one."

A thought occurred to the Doctor. "Stay away from Martha," he said.

His seventh self just smiled slightly, came up to him, and lightly pressed the Doctor's nose.

It didn't feel like anything.

The Doctor braced his hands on either wall of the corridor. "Do you know, old girl," he said in a carrying voice, "I can't help noticing that side-effects abound whenever you put a little bit of yourself into one of us fleshlings?"

It worked. The ghost in front of him smiled and melted away like the Cheshire Cat. The Doctor closed his eyes in relief, his hands still on the walls.

"You scare me, sometimes," he said quietly.

* * *

"Why does it not surprise me that you are _literally_ a wanted heretic?" Martha hissed through her teeth.

"Because you're an astute girl with a good head on her shoulders. Quick, through here!"

He tugged her into what, though they were fifty millennia into the future and in the heart of a sacred temple, she could have sworn was a broom cupboard. Every planet seemed to have them.

"Do you think he's still after us?" Martha whispered, straining to catch the footsteps of the priest who'd been chasing them.

"Definitely," the Doctor whispered back.

Martha shifted away from him in the close confines of the closet and tried not to knock over any pails. "Was that blood on the walls? Under the equations?"

"Oh, yes. Not sacrifices, though—hard to explain. This is a religion without a god." He started digging things out of his pockets and wiring them together. "Entropy. They worship entropy. Though 'worship' isn't the best word; 'industrial-grade contemplation,' maybe? Anyway. They have a lot in common with the Bacchae, and they _really_ don't like me."

"Because…?"

"Ah," said the Doctor. "Well. When I first came here, I didn't know they were a cult. I just thought they were a physics colloquy. So I spread the glad word about the modifications they were going to have to make to their holy writ to accommodate time travel."

Martha didn't have to pretend to be fascinated to keep him going. "Accommodate it how?"

"Entropy isn't a force. It's just a tendency the universe has, the tendency toward disorder, the tendency toward sameness—"

"I _am_ almost a doctor, you know," Martha cut in. "I did pass basic chemistry!"

"Ooh, I'd never have guessed."

"Cheeky bastard."

He flashed her a grin. "If you remember your chemistry, then you should remember your Boltzmann. Let's use Boltzmann, he's simple…" He scratched on the door with one of the metal bits: _S_ = _k_ ln _W_. "Applies to ideal gases, but we're not picky; we're stuffed in a broom cupboard. _S_ is entropy, and _W_, you might remember, is how many microstates there are for whichever macrostate we're considering. Ah, but! That 'macrostate' bit is a little tricky. We go around assuming that objects are themselves and describing them over a period of time, but it's a hefty thing, calling a system or an object itself.

"Your physicists—and this planet's, incidentally—don't worry about it too much, because they're secure in the knowledge that a system can't overlap with _itself_, at least." He tapped on her forehead, his finger light and cool between her eyes. "You and I, however…"

"Then, what, you have to redefine what a microstate of your system is?"

"Nothing so mundane. You have to redefine what identity is. Understand," he added, glancing up at her, "the second law of thermodynamics is still true, just with some modifications. Entropy increases, until the universe burns out. In theory, at least; can't say I've ever been to the end of the universe."

"Why not? God, if I had a time machine of my own, I know I'd go."

He waved a finger at her and glanced up again from his gadget. "Bad idea."

"Why?"

"Think about it. What makes time timey? Entropy. Without irreversible processes, what would be the difference between the future and the past? So imagine a completely cooled universe, Martha, where entropy has reached maximum and there are no more processes left to happen."

"There wouldn't be any more time," Martha whispered, more to herself than to him. "Anyone who went there would get stuck."

"Correctimundo."

"That's… well, I suppose it's good that everyone will have died by then."

Martha thought the Doctor froze for a moment, but then there was such a burst of activity from his hands that she felt she must have imagined it. "_Et voilà!_" He held up his completed gizmo with a flourish.

"Er, what is it?"

He grinned. "A nice, old-fashioned stun-gun." And then he opened the closet door and applied the business end to the shaven-headed priest who promptly fell inside.

He reached back for Martha's hand. "Time to go."

They ran, and Martha did her best to ignore the dull brown splashes on the pink sandstone.

He yanked on her arm at a fork. "This way!"

"No, it's this way!" She yanked on him harder.

"Companions, never any sense of direction—oh." He dropped her hand to dig for his TARDIS key as they turned the corner and nearly plowed into it.

He got the key into the lock, only to jump back like somebody getting a shock from static.

"Hurry up, yeah?" Martha said anxiously, as the sound of footsteps behind them suddenly got a lot louder.

"Stop him!" a voice bellowed.

"Doctor!"

He looked at the TARDIS for a moment, white. Then he shook himself, turned the lock, and shoved her in before him. In another moment, they were safe in the console room, the familiar gold and green coral structures shutting out the echoing reddish halls.

Martha broke out laughing despite herself, riding the adrenaline surge. "I think that's got to be the shortest time we've ever been _anywhere!"_

He tossed his coat over the railing and threw the dematerialization control with an air of enormous satisfaction. "And you say I can't keep a schedule, Martha Jones!"

It probably was just the adrenaline, but Martha felt like she was flying. When he looked up from the controls and met her eye with a slow smile, all she could think of was the pitch of his voice in the broom cupboard and the way he'd looked at her as he'd talked to her about time. Not with desire, or with the speculative promise that had first drawn her down that alleyway, but with… expectation.

She wanted to see that look again.

"So, time travel," she said, articulately.

"I hear it's nice this time of year."

She leaned against the console next to him, absently rubbing the edge with her thumb. "You said that the same thing can go back and interact with itself, or the same person, but I thought the universe wouldn't allow paradoxes."

"Loops aren't all paradoxes, Martha." He loosened the circle of his tie, pulled it over his head, and solemnly settled it around her neck. "Like so."

Her lips parted. "But—"

"But?"

"But what's the difference? Between one kind of loop and another? How do you decide which is which?"

He opened his mouth to answer her, but nothing came out. Instead he just stared at her for such a long interval that she started to wonder if she had food on her face. "Why ask, Martha?" he said at last, in a funny tone.

Martha blinked. "So I can know."

"And take all the fun and the mystery out of it?"

"Why would it?"

"Another time, maybe." He turned back to the console. "You must be tired."

Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. "Ooookay. I'll… see you in the morning, then."

Martha was left feeling somewhat like she was in Spain and her interpreter had just refused her a Spanish lesson. But she didn't know what else to say to that, so she headed off to her room, trailing her fingers along the walls.

* * *

"Why are you here?" he asked the ghost again.

The ghost, perched on the crash seat, rested its chin on its fingers where they were laced on the question mark handle of the umbrella. "That is a linear question with a nonlinear answer."

The Doctor stared into a blank crystalline interface in the console, torn between worry that Martha would return and more nebulous fears. He had hurt her feelings just now, he could tell.

"Please, old girl," he pleaded softly. "Why won't you talk to me? Why let _him_ out, instead?"

"_He_ is right here," said the ghost.

The Doctor turned to it. "You want me to deal with you? Fine. Stay away from Martha. Stay out of her room, stay out of her way, stay out of her head. It isn't safe."

"Safe for whom?"

A terrible thought occurred to him. "Rose? This isn't you, is it?"

The ghost scowled. "As if she hadn't had better things to worry about than your machinations. Stop shifting blame."

The Doctor spoke directly to the TARDIS. "Why is it here? Why now?"

"That's the inconvenient thing about time travelers," the ghost remarked. "They don't always have their hallucinations in quite the right order."

The Doctor rounded on it. "I'm not hallucinating."

"Who said I'm yours?" it countered unperturbedly.

The Doctor chose to ignore the many possible insinuations in that sentence. Instead he let his fingers roam over the scanners, looking for a good destination, a good distraction. He didn't want to stay hanging in the vortex after that aborted conversation.

"You could probably teach her a good deal, if you cared to," said the ghost from its seat. "She's clever, for a human. Not passionate in the ways you usually favor, but she does have that curious detachment you're so fascinated by."

The Doctor repressed a shudder. "I can't do another Ace. I _can't_ do that again."

"Either you shape her, or circumstances will," the ghost advised him.

"Circumstances shape everybody," said the Doctor finally. "I haven't the right."

* * *

Martha loved this game.

"All right," she said as they moved down a street in what was obviously London. "We've got flyers for events in the Millennium Dome, so we're sometime after 2000—oi, I saw you peek at her newspaper!"

"As if I'd need to resort to that, Martha."

"Well, don't look at newspaper dates, then."

"I didn't! …it was folded the wrong way."

Martha laughed, and he grinned suddenly, like he was king of the world because he could make her laugh. It made her a little giddy. "All right, your go," she said.

"Hmm." He jounced the arm linked with his as he jingled the change in his pocket. "Sometime before 2013. Shoulder pads haven't made a comeback yet."

"You liar."

"I beg your pardon, I'm an honest Time Lord! Pointy shoulder pads come back in 2013, they're the biggest thing in ages. As indispensable as ties for half a century."

"Oh, you are _lying_, you are making that up!"

"It's not my fault you don't know your history. We're pre-2013, annnnd… it's spring."

"And it's spring," she agreed. It was one of those perfect, hyper-real spring days, where the breeze was just the right temperature, the air had just the right clarity, and the plants were in just the right colors to make her senses turn up the volume. There were still puddles from when it had been raining recently, and in a day or two it would probably go back to it, but for now the entire world was freshly washed and vivid. Martha tipped her head back to feel the sunlight on her face—and caught sight of her winning move.

"Spring of 2006," she said smugly.

"Are you sure? I think it's 2005."

Martha pointed at the advert she'd seen. "Always UltraNite Wing Pads. Brand-new in 2006. Discontinued 2007. I win."

The Doctor's face was very gratifying. For one thing, he suddenly seemed a lot less alien.

"Don't hate me because I'm resourceful. Where are you going to buy me the ice cream I've just won, then?"

He never answered her. Martha felt the Doctor stiffen at her side, and before she could look round she heard her name.

"Martha!"

Her cousin Adeola was scarcely thirty feet down the pavement, a shopping bag on her arm and waving madly.

Martha expected the Doctor to restrain her as she ran to meet Adeola, but he was already melting into the background. Adeola gave an exaggerated "Oof!" when Martha tackled her with a full-body hug.

"Good to see you, too," she joked, patting Martha back politely.

"You and I have to talk," Martha said urgently when she detached herself.

"I'll say," said Adeola, raising her eyebrows at the Doctor as he slowly approached them.

Martha rolled her eyes despite herself. "We aren't," she said. "And anyway, there are more important things—"

"We need to talk, Martha," the Doctor said behind her. His voice was quiet, but it cut.

She ignored him. "Are you free for lunch later?"

"Yeah! Although I can't remember the last time you were; you're always rushing off to the hospital."

Martha felt the prickle of tears and blinked them back before Adeola could see them. "I should have made time."

"Well, since you're feeling guilty, you can buy. Oh, your mum was talking with my mum—"

"Martha," the Doctor said again.

Adeola looked at him curiously, though not with any serious scrutiny, and Martha smiled wanly. "A medical researcher. We're working on this—thing. We'd better, uh, finish everything up. Where can I meet you?"

"The coffee shop next street over? I can be there at one o'clock."

"I'll see you then." Martha gave her one more quick hug and practically fled down the street, the Doctor on her heels.

There was no point in pretending to ignore him, so she ducked into the first alleyway that was a safe distance from Adeola. He ducked in right after her. Martha crossed her arms over her front and silently dared him to speak.

"Martha, what are you doing?"

"I can warn her! She doesn't have to be there, she doesn't have to die. Does she?"

He'd obviously been expecting it. "I told you when I met you: Crossing over into established events is forbidden."

"Except for cheap tricks, that's what you said."

He gave her a searching look without any anger in it. "Saving someone's life isn't a cheap trick. Is this an intellectual game to you, Martha?"

Her nails bit into her palms. "Don't you dare."

"How well did you actually know Adeola?"

"Don't you _fucking dare,_ Doctor. She's family!" She couldn't remember when she'd last been this blindingly angry at him. "You cross over into established events all the time, we do it every bloody day! And what about your cheap trick? Not that cheap, was it? Because without it I would have looked at your chart instead of looking twice at you; I might never have listened to your heart, and I definitely wouldn't have come with you. So why is that allowed? Established events according to who? You go barging into other people's pasts all the time, and you save people!"

"It's different, Martha," he said, too gently.

"Then tell me how!"

"Adeola was at the battle of Canary Wharf. So was I."

Martha blinked. "That's it? You were there, that's it?"

"Changing the past of a time traveler is another level of danger and complexity entirely. Tampering with a major event that's also part of a time traveler's past, my past, that's too dangerous. We talked about causal loops once, remember? There's more than one kind."

"But what's the difference between them? _Why_ is this different?"

"Trust me, Martha. I'm a Time Lord."

"Explain it to me," said Martha. She didn't take her eyes off him. "Just show me the logic, and I won't go."

He looked away instead.

"Right. I'm off, then."

His hand shot out to her arm. _"Don't do this,_ Martha."

She shook him off. "I'm going to meet her, I'm going to tell her, and I'm going to save her."

"Oh, that's a good plan. Do you have one for how you're going to avoid yourself for two years?"

"You won't leave without me."

"Are you certain about that?" he said icily.

"I'm certain you can't keep me around by threatening to leave." She turned to go.

"Martha, wait—"

She didn't.

* * *

Martha got to the café early and sat buying latte after latte, trying to calm her nerves. She tried to think of ways she could convince Adeola to take her seriously and keep her mind off the Doctor.

"You, on time?" said Adeola out of nowhere, sliding into the seat across from her. "Must be the end of the world. So, anyway, like I was saying, I overheard your mum talking with my mum, and it didn't sound good. What's Clive done, this time? Did he bring his girlfriend to the divorce hearing or something?"

Martha sat stupidly for a moment as she tried to remember what had been going on in the spring of 2006. "I—I don't know. You know what they're like, both of them; they're always fighting."

Adeola gave her a look that was not entirely loving and cousinly. "You always play the peacemaker, Martha. You could at least admit he's a git."

Martha felt her face heat. "He's my dad."

"Yeah, well, she's my mum's sister, I know whose side I'm on. You just can't stand conflict—"

"Adeola, none of this matters." Martha leaned in across the table. "Look, I came to tell you…" She fidgeted, trying to figure out how to get Adeola to listen. They'd never communicated that well; Martha had never understood her, really.

"Martha, are you all right?" said Adeola. "You're being really strange."

She forced a smile. "I'm fine! Just, you know, stuff. How about you, where are you working these days?"

Adeola took a sip from Martha's drink and waved her hand. "Bo-ring. I'm at this insurance place—"

"Sounds posh," said Martha, trying not to sound desperate. "Is that down by Canary Wharf, then?"

Adeola looked at her like she'd just sprouted a cactus out her head. "Canary Wharf? I'm in complaints for Badboy car insurance. What'd I be doing there?'

Martha frowned. She'd heard the rumors, same as everybody else: that the terrorist attack on Canary Wharf had really targeted a clandestine government operation, some MI-5 sort of outfit. Was this the cover story, then? Car insurance? Martha would hardly have thought that her cousin was the type for secret agencies, but she couldn't help remembering the Doctor's question: How well did she really know Adeola?

"You're, uh, sure you don't work in Canary Wharf?" she asked, watching Adeola for a tell.

"Pretty sure, yeah," said Adeola.

Screw it. "Forget where work is or what work is; if it's secret, I don't need to know, honest. Just don't be in Canary Wharf on the third of July next year. Pull a sickie, take a holiday, whatever. Just don't be there."

Annoyance and amusement warred on Adeola's face. "Did Leo put you up to this? Tell him to knock it off with the practical jokes; you're rubbish at it, for one thing." She pushed away from the table. "Look, I'm off, if we're not going to eat. I don't get a lot of time off work. Smack your little brother for me."

"Adeola, wait!"

Adeola paused, her bag halfway to her shoulder. "July the third, 2007," Martha whispered. "Please just remember."

Adeola rolled her eyes. "Right."

Then she was gone.

Martha felt numb, shaky and nauseated from too much caffeine. She left some sort of money on the table and left the café; when she got outside into the sun, Adeola was long gone. Shock settled over her as she slowly started back toward where she and the Doctor had landed and began to process what she'd done. She was two years into her past with no place, no _identity_, and she'd as much as told the Doctor to go to hell. For nothing. Two steps on her own and she'd fallen. And she'd taken Adeola with her.

She'd failed.

She approached the last corner before the landing place with growing dread, and she didn't know whether she was more afraid of being left or of facing him. Martha hesitated before she turned the corner.

"Police box, a proper old police box! You can't do a piece on local color without a police box."

There was the Doctor, showing off the TARDIS to some sort of journalist, who shaded his eyes with his notepad as he took a series of careful shots with a digital camera. "Totally outmoded these days what with mobiles, obviously, but fifty years ago—" The Doctor broke off when he saw Martha. She stood silently. "Excuse me." Waving the journalist off, he looked her over, and she could see from the gentle expression on his face that he was devastated.

He opened his arms to her. "Oh, Martha."

* * *

The Doctor hadn't even recognized Martha at first when they'd met, and reflecting on that now made him burn with shame. You should always remember what you kill.

When she shut herself in her room after her meeting with Adeola, he stood outside her door for a long time, listening masochistically for the tears, but if she had any, they were quiet. Eventually he moved on, toward the center of the ship and away from her. He didn't think she'd want to see him just yet.

He'd never told her what her cousin had really been doing at Canary Wharf. He'd definitely never told her about waking up from dreams where he cradled Martha's skull in his hands as he held the sonic screwdriver to her head and felt blood run out her ear. The Doctor did not have an entirely good relationship with his memory.

This time, he was pretty much expecting the ghost. "Well?" it said.

"You've been waiting for this, haven't you?"

"'Waiting' isn't quite the right word; it's very linear."

The Doctor let his breath out. "I'd never met her before, not really. She was already gone by the time I got to Canary Wharf. She was so unlike Martha. And so real. You always think you'll be prepared for it, meeting one of those, but you never are."

"Mmm. You seem to have been prepared enough."

His jaw clenched. "Adeola didn't recognize me," he told the ghost. "She didn't care who I was; she barely even noticed my existence. I didn't expect that going into it, I really didn't."

"And what does it tell you, that she didn't?"

"That in the spring of 2006, Adeola didn't work for Torchwood yet."

"Correctimundo."

The Doctor held his head in his hands. "And she never would have worked for Torchwood, except that now I've guaranteed they'll seek her out. She was so unlike Martha, but she _looked_ so much like Martha. I knew that already, but seeing them next to each other, that's something I could have done without. As far as Torchwood are concerned, Adeola's just been seen meeting herself. And then meeting me. Recruiting someone they think is going to be my companion—it's cold, it's underhanded, it's brilliant. It's completely them. I knew it was when I persuaded that journalist that police boxes are newsworthy, and when I made sure Martha would go to meet her."

"Perfectly true."

"What should I have done, then? Just tell me that."

"You could have told her. She could have taken on half the decision. She could have joined you."

The Doctor tasted the memory of literal ashes in his mouth, a century old now. "Martha could never have killed her cousin on purpose," he said dully. "No decent human being could."

"Not personally, no. But we both know she has her peculiarities. There's always been that detachment that bothers you. She couldn't have handed Adeola over to Torchwood herself, but she could have consented to the necessity of it happening, if you'd let her see why."

"That would have been unspeakably cruel!"

"Cruel, yes," his earlier self thundered, "but what you did was demeaning, and that was far worse!"

His head snapped up.

"Oh, yes," the ghost went on. "You couldn't make up your mind whether you wanted her hands clean or dirty, so you tried to have it both ways. All you did was take from her the only good that could have come out of this: understanding. When did you forget how to teach, Doctor?"

"When I realized I don't know anything."

"You used to know the difference between using someone in a plan and making plans for them."

The Doctor barked a laugh. "You can stop now," he said, "though I don't suppose you will. I get the point."

"Oh?"

"Yes. You're my guilty conscience. I would never have expected it would look like you, but I suppose a sense of irony comes with age."

"Except that I know something you don't."

The Doctor froze. "What?"

The ghost looked straight at him, and its eyes were as blue as the TARDIS. "Yvonne Hartman survived the conversion process. She kept a shred of her humanity, and she destroyed the last Cybermen in a dingy stairwell not fifty meters from you while you opened the Void. She bought you time.

"Adeola bought you time, you might say, rather, for I think it was only seeing what the Cybermen had done to her that let Yvonne hold on. Adeola was her employee, someone Torchwood sought out and recruited, and loyalty was one concept Yvonne understood. So you see, Doctor, you're quite right. You're not me. You are far, far more dangerous. You're running scared and giving second chances to none, operating preemptively rather than risk another temporal disaster like Gallifrey."

The Doctor stared at it, shaken. "Yvonne Hartman saved us all?"

It smiled at him.

"But how do you know that? How can you possibly know that?"

But the ghost merely looked at him, placid, the question marks on its costume iterating into meaninglessness.

"I was right, then. You of all beings can't tell me I wasn't right. Adeola had to die there." He wanted to believe that she was telling him this so he would have that much comfort. Perhaps if it had been purely the TARDIS, she would want that.

"It was the right answer, perhaps, but the right route?" said the ghost.

"What do you suggest, then?"

Silence.

"How can I explain this to Martha?" said the Doctor. "It's easy to talk about the right path, but how can I do that to her?"

Still silence.

"She'll leave me," the Doctor said, and it sounded pathetic even to his own ears. But it wasn't fair. Billions of human beings on planet Earth, billions of trillions of other beings scattered across the universe, most of them with normal lives and no connection to him at all, and he ended up with Martha Jones. It was almost as if someone had put her in his path. "She loves me."

"That has little to do with you. It's a chrysalis for her."

The Doctor bowed his head. "I could at least explain why it couldn't change. I'll tell her that. As soon as she's calmed down and we have a quick refuel in Cardiff, I'll tell her," he said, nearly to himself. "She'll get over it. Ace did."

The ghost picked up its umbrella and dropped its hat back on its head. "She isn't like Ace. You saw to that."

* * *

"So, Ianto," Martha called as she descended the last of the stairs leading to the archives, "what is it that you wanted to show me?"

He looked up from the workstation he had crammed between a file cabinet and a secure artifact locker, his small smile illuminated by the blue glow from his laptop. "Ah. Owen all settled in for his tests, then?"

"Yep. Stress tests on a dead man, wish I could put _that_ in a medical journal. Mad day."

"It's a bit out of the usual range even for us." He motioned for her to join him beside the computer, and brought out a flashdrive from his pocket.

"You could have just sent that upstairs. Jack doesn't know about this, then?" said Martha curiously.

Ianto colored faintly and shook his head, but he didn't look guilty. He and Martha got along well. Ianto was a reserved sort, and Martha could tell he was a bit surprised at how open he was around her. She didn't tell him that it was probably because she had watched him fight and bleed out all over her in an alternate timeline; it was enough to know that he would believe her and understand if she ever did.

"He's seen the footage, I'm certain, but he doesn't know I have a copy." Ianto slotted the drive into a USB port and looked at Martha. "You don't have to watch this if you don't want to. I just wanted to offer, in case you might want the closure. Torchwood One had CCTV pretty much everywhere: Archives, boardrooms, laboratories, corridors, washrooms. Stairwells. Every inch of the battle."

Martha nodded slowly. "I see."

Ianto rested a finger on the key for playback. "No. You don't, yet."

*


End file.
